Chapter 273 Reclamation of Sea and Land
Chapter 273 Reclamation of Sea and Land
The seaside of Changli County.
After an old factory near the sea was acquired by Hailufeng Company, the renovation project has been completed.
Hailufeng Company's Changli County seawater desalination plant.
"Director, the company has obtained the approval for land reclamation."
"Did you get it?" Factory Director Dong Weihua took the document and looked through it carefully for a while. A smile appeared on his face: "Good, good, now we can finally let go and start production."
Ren Fangyuan, the factory's technical director, said with a smile, "Director, the boss can definitely get the approval, but we can't take it lightly either."
"I have no doubt about the boss's ability." Dong Weihua looked at the factory equipment with a smile on his face. After a while, he put away his smile and continued, "Although this is good news, we are still not producing at full capacity. After all, the local water plant needs less water, and we don't know when the pipeline will be completed."
Ren Fangyuan, who had been paying attention to this matter these days, smiled bitterly and shook his head: "Director, I'm afraid this matter is not that easy."
Although the North China Plain is short of water, it is not as scarce as in the Northwest.
Especially after the new water purification equipment began mass production, water plants in various cities in the North China Plain have successively introduced the equipment, increased the treatment of tap water and sewage, and increased the water recycling rate within the city.
For example, Beijing, which has been plagued by water shortages, will use 2027 billion cubic meters of water for production and living in 26.4. Its permanent population is 2207 million, and the average annual water consumption per person is 119.6 cubic meters.
This per capita water consumption is obviously too little.
Because this water consumption data does not distinguish between domestic water and production water, the annual per capita water consumption in the Lingnan region can reach 316 cubic meters, almost three times that of the capital.
However, after the introduction of a large number of water purification equipment, the capital's tap water system was immediately transformed, and its water recycling rate continued to rise.
Whether it is industrial water, commercial water or domestic water, it is gradually incorporated into the urban water circulation system.
Under such circumstances, Beijing's demand for seawater desalination has decreased, and even the enthusiasm for increasing the water transmission capacity of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project has continued to decline.
Because in the ever-increasing urban internal water circulation system, as the water recycling utilization rate continues to increase, the capital city actually shows no water shortage.
Since there is no water shortage, there is no motivation to promote seawater desalination.
After all, it costs money to desalinate seawater and import it inland.
Although the factory price of pure water after desalination is only a few cents per cubic meter, the problem is that water pipelines and supporting facilities require money, and this money increases with the increase of transportation distance.
Unless it is possible to utilize natural river channels and natural elevation differences to deliver water by gravity, the investment cost will certainly be very high.
If you refer to the East Route Plan of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project based on the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, you will understand the scale of the investment.
Moreover, they all have large-scale desalination of seawater, which has caused many experts and scholars to have doubts.
One of the biggest points of controversy is the byproduct of large-scale desalination: crude salt.
Every cubic meter of seawater desalinated produces about 35 kilograms of crude salt.
Desalinating 350 million cubic meters of seawater a year will produce million tons of crude salt. Such a large amount of crude salt is difficult to handle. The chemical industry may be able to consume to million tons of crude salt, but once the scale of seawater desalination is expanded to the level of several billion cubic meters per year, it will be hundreds of millions of tons of crude salt every year, and the chemical system simply cannot digest so much crude salt.
Compared with the slow pace of Changli County's desalination plant.
The seawater desalination plants in Ganen City, Qiongzhou are in full swing.
Especially after getting the land reclamation approval. Why should we apply for land reclamation project?
The answer is to deal with this coarse salt.
Reclamation with coarse salt?
Yes, not entirely.
At present, Hailufeng Company's method of crude salt reclamation is to use silicon bean silk cloth as the inner layer, and then pour concrete, using a large amount of silicon bean silk instead of steel bars to create a large salt storage tank.
After the salt is stored, the tank is completely sealed and then lifted by airship to a planned coastal area for land reclamation.
The service life of these tanks can last about seventy to eighty years, so further processing is required.
In order to prevent these salt tanks from leaking on a large scale in the future, a barrier layer needs to be built along the edge of the land reclamation area to prevent seawater from coming into contact with the coarse salt inside the tanks that may rupture in the future.
The reclaimed area is used as the industrial area of Hailufeng Company.
The currently planned Gratitude City desalination plant has an annual production capacity of 8 million cubic meters, which will produce approximately 2800 million tons of crude salt, with a volume of approximately 1300 million cubic meters.
Including the silicon bean silk concrete of the outer shell, the total volume is approximately 1400 million cubic meters.
The sea water along the coast of Gratitude City is not deep, so so many solid tanks with a capacity of 1400 million cubic meters can fill about 2000 acres of land.
In other words, the six desalination plants in Gratitude City can reclaim about 2000 acres of land every year.
Of course, as the reclaimed area extends toward the open sea, the depth of the sea water will gradually increase, and the area that can be reclaimed will gradually decrease.
However, this kind of reclamation seems to require some soil and rocks to fill the gaps. At the same time, considering the need to build a foundation, a cofferdam must be built in advance.
This kind of land reclamation project is also a relatively convenient one for Qiongzhou Island. If it is in the Bohai Bay, since it is an inland sea, land reclamation in the Bohai Bay is a very unprofitable project, as it will mainly reduce the area of the inland sea and affect the ecological environment of the Bohai Sea.
If it is the coastal areas of Qi, Lu and Jiangsu provinces, which face the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea directly, the impact of land reclamation will not be too great.
After a hundred years, this kind of reclamation project will form a large artificial salt mine underground, which can be used as a resource reserve and land, and can also obtain a large amount of fresh water.
It is safer than storing it on land or burying it in an abandoned mine, and it does not take up space, and it also allows the crude salt to be recycled.
As the salt and stone land reclamation project continues to extend to the open sea, the newly created land is on the periphery and the old salt and stone land is on the inside. Even if the tank ages and cracks, it will not leak out.
A large-scale leak would only occur if a major earthquake occurred in the area, instantly tearing the land apart or sinking it to the bottom of the sea.
However, the area off the coast of Gratitude City is not a traditional earthquake zone. If it is the sea area near the Qiongzhou Strait, then we do need to consider the possibility of a major earthquake in the future. After all, in history, the Coconut City in Qiongzhou was hit by a major earthquake, causing a piece of land to sink to the bottom of the sea.
Currently, the salt-stone land reclamation technology has been fully tested along the coast of Gratitude City. If no serious problems are found, desalination plants in coastal areas across the country will adopt this method to deal with excess crude salt.
Taking into account the ecological impact, the Bohai Bay area currently mainly relies on self-circulation of inland cities and industrial water. If the fresh water in the North China Plain is really insufficient in the future, the only solution is to use large-scale seawater desalination.
Therefore, both technical directions are being advanced.
In fact, experts and scholars from all over North China currently have another plan, which is to build an artificial lake.
By excavating the remains of ancient lakes and then re-forming lakes, these lakes can enhance the overall water storage capacity of the region and increase the local self-circulating water limit.
(End of this chapter)